Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

All Posts Tagged ‘google’
  

Congratulations Google, Your Win in Los Angeles is a Win for Us All

Oct 28th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Michael Ferranti

Congratulations Google from all of us at Rackspace. Los Angeles, California is going with Google Apps for its new city-wide email solution. This is a big win for you and for Los Angeles.

We’re your competitor. We believe that we beat you on price and on service. But on the point that moving email and apps to the cloud makes sense for huge numbers of customers, we couldn’t agree with you more. When customers get in the cloud, they save money and work smarter. Whether they’re looking for the power of Microsoft Exchange without the headache of managing it or great web-based POP and IMAP, email hosting frees customers up to focus on their core competencies. Whether we call it Going Google or getting in the cloud, the point is the same. The future of email is cloud-based and we’re happy that you’re right along with us helping customers get there.

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Google Study Investigates Perceptions about the Cloud

Oct 28th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Trevor Winters

Google has recently conducted a study that confirms what we are seeing in the marketplace. More and more companies are moving to the cloud, even as cost is cited as a barrier by those resistant to change:

“Cost or budget issues were the primary factor reported as a barrier to adoption.”

Reviewing Google’s study, readers will quickly learn that those who have moved to the cloud cite value as one of the key benefits, including cost savings:

“Benefits to using cloud apps include value, availability, convenience, consistency across locations, better service, reliability, and simplicity of updates/maintenance.”

This apparent contradiction is a classic example of human nature’s ability to stick with the status quo well beyond its usefulness. And for this reason we consider the 1.4 million mailboxes we host as merely the tip of the iceberg.

Once upon a time factories produced their own electricity. Very few have the need to do so in modern times. Get in the cloud and start the next chapter in your company’s life.

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Don’t Put All “Emails” In One Basket

Sep 24th, 2009 in Email & Apps Industry by Andy Schroepfer

There is a proven theory in the investing world about how one should not put all their eggs in one basket. In a word, diversification. The logic of diversification has been applied to many circles of life, but it is now proving to be good advice in communications, especially email.

Several of the consumer email providers have been trying to service business customers in recent years. Microsoft began with MSN mail, added Hotmail, and now has Live Mail, which accepts subscriptions from individuals as well as micro businesses. Google is another example, where Gmail is offered to both consumers as well as universities and businesses under Google Apps. Having both one’s personal and work email in one account with the same provider might sound like a move that simplifies life, but it exposes additional risks when outages happen.

This is coming to light for users of Gmail today, which is having another unfortunate service outage. (Full Disclosure: We admit we are not perfect either) A tweet message from @eskobarnow hits on this exact point. When your personal email account is unavailable, you can use your work account for important personal emails. Vice versa when your work email is down. However, as @eskobarnow points out, one can be “screwed” when a single outage makes both your work and personal account inaccessible.

These days, the ability to easily import contacts and files from one system to another is rather easy in many cases. Accordingly, the benefits of using the same provider for work and personal email are lessened. Some providers allow two accounts to be viewed in a single inbox view, which is surely more elegant then using forwarding rules to accomplish the same. HOWEVER, what good is it to have all messages from two or more different accounts on the same inbox, when the inbox is not accessible?

Yes, diversification works in the email world just as it does in investments.

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